These days if you are a content creator, celebrity or even a brand, verification feels like one of the biggest achievements. While it helps to let your target audience know that you are the one they are looking for, you also get to gain the advantage of the fact that the social media giants approve the quality of your work and the genuine audience you have, which eventually contribute a great deal into getting more followers as well.
However, YouTube while making some minor improvements in its system, forgot the importance of verification. So, what was next? A flood of complaints from the creators about it.
As there has been enough frustration for quite a while, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki took matters in her own hand and issued an official apology to the content creator community for forgetting to put out the all important verification tick badge.
In an official tweet, Wojcicki stated “I’m sorry for the frustration [and] hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification, while trying to make improvements, we missed the mark. As I write this, we’re working to address your concerns [and] we’ll have more updates soon.”
YouTube rolled out with changes in its verification policy a couple of days ago and as an effect to that a lot of popular creators also received emails that openly alerted them about losing onto their verified statuses. The creator can, of course, appeal the decision before it gets implemented by late October.
According to the executives of YouTube, these changes have been made in order to make sure that verified creators, brands or artist should also be popular outside YouTube and hence could eliminate impersonation scams too. So, for instance if people are looking for specific cooking channel like Bon Appétit they would be able to find it without wasting their time on channels with the similar name. These improvements also resemble a lot with how Facebook, YouTube and Instagram deal with creators before giving them the worthy badge.
That being said, the company did expect that the move would upset creators but in the end it is done just for their own protection and safety of the content they make. But if you are the original creative person, you won’t have to worry much as YouTube claims to personally review every appeal before implementing the verification policy changes in October.
And yes, being a creator, you better not be late in the appeal too.
Update: YouTube has tweaked its new policy after backlash. Here's what its new email to creators explained:
Illustration: Elena Lacey
Read next: YouTube’s new feature will now display comment history of users as well
However, YouTube while making some minor improvements in its system, forgot the importance of verification. So, what was next? A flood of complaints from the creators about it.
As there has been enough frustration for quite a while, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki took matters in her own hand and issued an official apology to the content creator community for forgetting to put out the all important verification tick badge.
In an official tweet, Wojcicki stated “I’m sorry for the frustration [and] hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification, while trying to make improvements, we missed the mark. As I write this, we’re working to address your concerns [and] we’ll have more updates soon.”
YouTube rolled out with changes in its verification policy a couple of days ago and as an effect to that a lot of popular creators also received emails that openly alerted them about losing onto their verified statuses. The creator can, of course, appeal the decision before it gets implemented by late October.
According to the executives of YouTube, these changes have been made in order to make sure that verified creators, brands or artist should also be popular outside YouTube and hence could eliminate impersonation scams too. So, for instance if people are looking for specific cooking channel like Bon Appétit they would be able to find it without wasting their time on channels with the similar name. These improvements also resemble a lot with how Facebook, YouTube and Instagram deal with creators before giving them the worthy badge.
- Also read: YouTube Brings Leanback to an End
That being said, the company did expect that the move would upset creators but in the end it is done just for their own protection and safety of the content they make. But if you are the original creative person, you won’t have to worry much as YouTube claims to personally review every appeal before implementing the verification policy changes in October.
And yes, being a creator, you better not be late in the appeal too.
Update: YouTube has tweaked its new policy after backlash. Here's what its new email to creators explained:
We recently emailed [creators] about changes to our verification program. Since then, we’ve heard feedback from the community loud and clear – we’re sorry for the frustration that this has caused, and we have updated the program in response. First, if your channel already has the verification badge, you will now keep it. No need to appeal. We’ll still remove verification if we find that a channel is attempting to impersonate another creator or brand; addressing impersonation was one of the goals of this change. We’ve also clarified the criteria to be eligible to apply for verification. Like in the past, channels that reach 100k subs will be eligible to apply for verification. To better clarify how channels will qualify, we’ve updated the eligibility criteria here. YouTube Premium We hope that these clarifications are helpful and that these changes will improve the program for creators and viewers. Thanks,
Illustration: Elena Lacey
Read next: YouTube’s new feature will now display comment history of users as well
